Bridging the Science-Religion Divide When Britain's Cambridge University Instituted a Chair to Study How Science and Religion Work Hand in Hand, It Touched off a Widespread Debate about the Validity of Religious Beliefs and the Limits of Scientific Research

Bridging the Science-Religion Divide When Britain's Cambridge University Instituted a Chair to Study How Science and Religion Work Hand in Hand, It Touched off a Widespread Debate about the Validity of Religious Beliefs and the Limits of Scientific Research

Article excerpt

NO one can recall, in modern times, an issue in Britain emerging
from the hallowed halls of academia that has ignited such a public
conflagration.

The troubles began when Susan Howatch, the multimillionaire
blockbuster novelist ("Penmarric," "The Rich Are Different"),
decided to donate 1 million ($1.5 million) to one of the world's
most venerated universities for the specific purpose of
establishing a new graduate seat of learning.

The idea was to create a place where advanced-degree students at
Cambridge University can do high-level research into the
complementary nature - as opposed to what many academics see as the
conflicting stance - of science and religion: how the two
disciplines contribute to each other and to our understanding of
ourselves and the universe.

Only one other similar university post exists, located at
Princeton University in New Jersey. The man filling it, Wentzel Van
Huysteen, is a noted theologian and philosopher. The distinction of
the Cambridge lectureship - which is already attracting
international attention - is that it is conceived as being held by
someone who is first and foremost a scientist.

"To give the money to help establish the lectureship seemed to
me to be such an obvious thing to do," says Ms. Howatch, who has
been exploring the relationship between Christian belief and the
modern world in her more recent novels. "I am a lover of truth;
and if you think of truth as being multifaceted and so huge that we
human beings can't fully comprehend it, then obviously it makes
sense to put all the facts together - to compare disciplines and
try to advance the sum of knowledge by exploration and
examination."

Here's where the controversy exploded. Every major newspaper in
Britain has carried the story. Editorials were fired off.

Nature magazine, regarded by many as the top international
science journal, penned a particularly pointed piece. It castigated
Cambridge, renowned as a major world center of the natural
sciences, for stooping so low as to use the money of an
"airport-bookstand" novelist to create such an "empty" academic
post.

Then came a spate of letters. Richard Dawkins, an eminent Oxford
University zoologist and the author of two pioneering works on
genetics, "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker," led
the critics of the new lectureship. Summing up their position in a
British newspaper, the Independent, they extoled the many
contributions of science and scathingly asked of religion: "What
has {it} ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has
{it} ever said anything that is demonstrably true?... The
achievements of theologians don't even mean anything.... If all the
achievements of {religion} were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone
notice the smallest difference?"

"I'm not surprised, really, by all the fuss," says Fraser
Watts, a cognitive psychologist and the man recently chosen to fill
Cambridge's chair - the Starbridge Lectureship in Science and
Theology, as it is officially known. "There are a lot of
scientists who are very bigoted about religion. So, in a sense, the
establishment of this post challenges their bigotry. It's not,
therefore, surprising that they have become so upset about it."

Dr. Dawkins, however, dismisses the allegation of bigotry. In an
interview, he argues that, like Howatch, he too is a "lover of
truth." To him, therefore, combining science and theology for the
purpose of academic inquiry is anathema.

"I do not think that theology is a subject at all," he says.
"Indeed, as such, it is a nonsubject, which should not in any
sense be treated as an equal of science. …